Turning a beggar from the
door may be right enough, but pretending to know all the stories the
beggar might have narrated is pure nonsense; and this is practically
the claim of the egoism which thinks that self-assertion can obtain
knowledge. A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man--the matter
awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms,
the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which
a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view,
he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he
is not a beetle. The most brilliant exponent of the egoistic school,
Nietszche, with deadly and honourable logic, admitted that the
philosophy of self-satisfaction led to looking down upon the weak, the
cowardly, and the ignorant. Looking down on things may be a delightful
experience, only there is nothing, from a mountain to a cabbage, that is
really _seen_ when it is seen from a balloon. The philosopher of the ego
sees everything, no doubt, from a high and rarified heaven; only he sees
everything foreshortened or deformed.
Now if we imagine that a man wished truly, as far as possible, to see
everything as it was, he would certainly proceed on a different
principle.
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